The simplest device in this unequal comparison is an off-the-peg DVD player that is also able to replay the MPEG-4 video format. Up to now, NorthQ's devices have been like gold dust in Germany; we found suppliers in Switzerland, however, who will part hands with the NQ5000 for around $274.

A glance at the NorthQ website reveals a confusion of names: the NorthQ NQ5000 and NQ7000 are DVD players, but the NQ4000 is a power unit and the NQ3000 is a processor cooler. Caution is therefore advised when buying online.

We had the NQ5000 DVD player for the test. It uses Sigma's EM8500 chip to decode DivX video data. There's a small snag with this one, though, as films encoded with QPEL (Quarter Pixel) cannot be played back. The DVD player's menu is in German; the handbook, meanwhile, is limited to English and Danish.

It plays DivX with no problems (two audio tracks as well) and likewise Xvid. However, only the rudimentary AVI container is supported, with no room for the far more flexible OGM container (Ogg Media). The latter handles features such as index positions, subtitles and more than two audio tracks. OGM is also necessary for sound in Ogg-Vorbis or MP3 format.

Regrettably, the entire directory structure on the storage medium is completely ignored when replaying a data CD or DVD of music files. Come rain or shine, the NorthQ always sorts based on the names of all available titles. That means that if you have an album with titles stored in subfolders with preceding title numbers, they'll be played back in a confusing jumble. Playlists can help here to at least enable some sort of direct access to favorite ditties.

At around $180 (€200), the NQ5000 isn't exactly a great deal, as you can now pick up an MPEG-4 capable DVD player for a fair deal less. However, depending on the decoder chip, these alternatives may not live up to expectations in some areas.